1995 Introduction
By Bill Doskoch
CAJ representative
Project Censored Canada
There are two sentences I read in the Canadian media this spring that really stick out in my mind.
One was "Some things aren't worth debating." The other was "What's $300 million these
days?"
The first was produced by Globe and Mail columnist and editorial writer Andrew Coyne, one of Canada's leading journalistic voices of neo-conservatism. He was taking a backhanded swipe at the book Shooting the Hippo, by ex-Globe and Mail staffer Linda McQuaig, a book which explores alternative ways of dealing with Canada's fiscal problems. Alan Christie, national editor of The Toronto Star, uttered the second one in reaction to the top story on Project Censored Canada's 1994 list - the estimated cost of cleaning up the nuclear facilities of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL). He was trying to explain why this didn't make the grade as a national story.
With all due respect to Mr. Christie and The Star, which produces some of the best investigative reporting in the country, when does fiscal mismanagement by a federal agency become newsworthy? When it hits a billion dollars?
If a news organization hears about such mismanagement, is he suggesting it should hold off on alerting the public about it until the scandal balloons into one of truly epic proportions? How is that in the public's interest? Still, it's the type of question news organizations wrestle with every day ("is this a story?"), making good decisions in some cases, and bad ones in others. Mr. Coyne's narrow attitude is much more troubling, and raises the following questions:
Is it worth debating why Canadian business executives would lobby American bond-rating agencies to downgrade Canada's credit rating, as Ms. McQuaig alleges? Is it worth challenging the veracity of claims made about New Zealand's economy by journalist Eric Malling on the CTV show W-5. According to the book Rae Days: The Rise and Folly of the NDP, by Star columnist Thomas Walkom, the W-5 show had a tremendous impact on the fiscal thinking of the recently defeated NDP government in Ontario, helping convince it to swing sharply to the economic right.
In Mr. Coyne's world, perhaps those questions aren't worth debating. I would strongly disagree. It appears others do too. As I write this, Shooting the Hippo is number one on The Globe's own national non-fiction bestseller list (to toot our own horn, the number six under-reported story for 1994 was an alternative strategy for reducing interest rate payments on the national public debt).
For a democracy to work properly, the mainstream media can't simply dismiss some contentious issues and ideas as being unworthy of debate because they don't mesh with conventional wisdom.
Project Censored Canada has completed its second year of measuring whether such attitudes and decisions are affecting the quality of news Canadians receive, and by extension, their ability to make fully-informed decisions as citizens.
As with last year, it's heartening that many of the stories on the top 10 list received some exposure in the mainstream media. While not perfect, Canadians have a news media with a generally wider field of ideological vision than their counterparts in the United States, the Andrew Coynes of the business not withstanding. One major reason is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which is much stronger than either National Public Radio or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the US. The looming cutbacks at the CBC, however, could dramatically upset that situation in the coming years.
The alternative media also have an important role to play in putting new ideas and perspectives on the agenda. It's distressing to see the Canada Council is considering funding changes that might seriously damage the ability of some to continue.
Although they are rare, stories do pop up about journalists being disciplined or fired for writing things that anger either their bosses, advertisers, or both. While apologists would emphasize the small number of reported incidents, we worry more about the stories that go unreported because journalists don't want to meet that fate.
It should be noted that 1994 wasn't a banner year, in terms of quantity, for investigative reporting in Canada. That's too bad. Canada needs good, probing, serious journalism - at the local and national levels, and by both the alternative and mainstream media. We salute the journalists carrying it out - especially those toiling for small, underfunded outlets. We also tip our hat to the news organizations that provide the resources and space for such reporting, and who take seriously their role of informing the public and providing a forum for wide-ranging debate.
As for the rest - we're watching.